The Lost World of Genesis One by John H. Walton Read Free Book Online Page B

waters and
total darkness.4 Everything is brought into existence by being differentiated. The "after" picture is consequently one of inestimable
diversity.5
    When Sumerian and Akkadian sources document creation
activities, we can observe both the situation before and after the
activity, as well as what sorts of verbs are used. All of this helps
to determine the focus of the creative activity. Many examples
exist, but here I will present just one as an illustration, a few
lines from the Sumerian text NBC6 11108:

    The "before" picture here is composed both of what is present-darkness, water and the nondiscrete heaven and earth-and
of what is not.- the absence of productivity, of the gods and of the
operation of the cult. Creative activities then alter this landscape.
All of this indicates that cosmic creation in the ancient world was
not viewed primarily as a process by which matter was brought
into being, but as a process by which functions, roles, order, jurisdiction, organization and stability were established. This defines
creation in the ancient world and in turn demonstrates that ontology was focused on something's functional status rather than its
material status.
    In summary, the evidence in this chapter from the Old Testament as well as from the ancient Near East suggests that both
defined the pre-creation state in similar terms and as featuring an
absence of functions rather than an absence of material. Such information supports the idea that their concept of existence was
linked to functionality and that creation was an activity of bringing functionality to a nonfunctional condition rather than bringing material substance to a situation in which matter was absent.
The evidence of matter (the waters of the deep in Gen 1:2) in the
precreation state then supports this view.
    TECHNICAL SUPPORT
    Tsumura, David. Creation and Destruction. Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 2005.

     



DAY ONE
    Why didn't God simply call light "light"? This was one of the
questions that first got me started on the journey that has resulted
in the interpretation of Genesis 1 presented in this book. It was
not the function orientation found in the ancient Near Eastern
literature that changed my way of thinking about Genesis 1-it
was the text of Genesis 1. The whole process begins with verse 5,
the concluding verse of the account of day one:
    God called the light "day" and the darkness he called "night."
And there was evening and there was morning-the first
day. (Nwv)
    First of all it should be observed that light is never treated as a
material object in the ancient Near East, despite our modern
physics. It is rather thought of as a condition, just as darkness is.
So even if light were being created, one would not be able to make
the claim that this is a material act. In fact, however, light itself is
not the focus of this day's activities. What is the text talking about when it indicates that God called the light "day"? After all, that is
not what light is. The solution is not difficult to find. Some would
even consider it transparent and hardly worth even noticing. If
something connected with light is named "day" we can deduce
that it is not light itself, but the period of light, for that is what
"day" is. Since "day" is a period of light, and "day" is the name
given, we conclude that we are dealing with a rhetorical device
called metonymy in which a noun can reasonably be extended to
a related concept.' In this case then, the author intends for us to
understand the word "light" to mean a period of light. Otherwise
the verse would not make sense. As a result, "God called the period of light `day' and the period of darkness he called `night."'z

    With this information from verse 5, we can now proceed backward through the text to verse 4. There we are told that "God
separated the light from the darkness." Again we note that this
statement does not make any sense if light and/or darkness are
viewed as